All Forum Posts by: Jonathan Greene

If you were in a multi or in an area where appreciation was guaranteed, you might have a better keep-to-rent option, but I don't see it with these numbers. The property won't do well enough to make it worth keeping. Sell it. Clermont isn't going to be consistent enough to hang onto it.

You need to be more specific to get the most out of help on BP. You are basically asking what kind of music is good. When you say "getting started," what are your plans? Do you have your own money? What experience do you have? Why do want to get into it? Are you planning on living in the investment? There are A LOT of very experienced investors on here, but to get the best bang for your question don't be so general and give us more information about you and your goals.

All of your suspicions are valid. They need to take care of #1. #2 isn't that crazy with a small property, but they should have some verifiable records, only if by hand or deposits that they can check. This is a deal-breaker if you can't verify the payments because you may have tenants who have not been paying. It's one thing to see an alleged rent roll based on leases, but another to see all the payments being made on time. When you invest in anything you want clarification of it's past performance and this is no different. #3 is a no-brainer, but it can be difficult to do inspections and get all 3 tenants on the same page. Remember that all the tenants will think they are getting evicted so have no real incentive to help with inspections. I hope this helps.

I would just have him co-sign the lease. These scenarios are great in my opinion because you know where the money is going to come from. I would, as was said, either qualify him or the trust entity, but I don't mind college students with co-signing parents as tenants. You always know there is a layer of financial safety there.

You have a fulltime job as a security officer and are almost done with school for welding, which is a very solid niche business that isn't going away with technology to my knowledge and you want to pitch those to do agent work or leasing consultant working on commission? NO. You can do all of what you want while doing the jobs that will give you your own money to invest.

I read as much as I could stomach, but the thing that sticks with me is that you are asking a seller for 2-2.5% assistance at closing and then also putting very strict deadlines on her? Everyone has told you that it's you being way too emotional and then you respond by saying you are just a business person. So are we. I do everything exactly the opposite of how you handled this. It's been on the market five days, why does she care? I don't know your market, but a 3-family for under 200k, 5 days on the market is going to get plenty more action and all you are doing by being so aggressive is telling her that. You have to be willing to walk away and not care. I put strict deadlines on deals also, but I don't hound them. I just walk away and wait for them to call. If they don't, no big deal. You will develop a very bad reputation with these pressure tactics, not only with sellers, but with agents who help you and on the other side.

The quickest way to ruin all the relationships you've built over the past 11 months is to bring an unverified block deal to the table. They will have 1,000,000 questions you can't answer and as has been said above, there are countless red flags. If you are still learning, why do you care about 53 single-family homes in Detroit, a market you have no knowledge of. Properties that only exist on spreadsheets are of no use to you or anyone else, unless fully verified with contracts, photos of the exterior and interior, and I am guessing that's never coming. Focus on staying local and providing value and finding deals that you can see and touch.

You have to segment the two business as much as possible and in most states, you must disclose you have a RE license on off-market mailers. I have two separate LLCs, one for my real estate business as an agent and one for an off-market property acquisition business. If you are wholesaling and your lead came from off-market or direct calls not related to your on-market agent business, then you should be safe treating it that way. However, the more your brokerage knows about your off-market deals, the more they want a cut. That's why separation is important. If a prior seller wants you to wholesale a property for them, that could be a more gray area. I've had brokerages say I couldn't wholesale to which I responded so I can't be a regular citizen as long as there is no crossover and there is full disclosure that I have a license? They couldn't answer.

Dual agency is permissible and many agents know how to manage it correctly. They should not be giving private information to you or the seller when representing both sides, however you always have to remember that their ultimate obligation is to the seller because that's they only way they get paid. You don't pay for a buyer's agent and you will now be paying for advice from the listing agent which inherently has a slight bias to selling this property and not another one. But if you do get a buyer's agent, they won't be able to sneak into this deal. Once you've seen it with the listing agent, they have agency for the deal.

You will get a lot of invest, invest, invest advice, but I don't agree. You will increase your freedom exponentially if you spend the next couple of years paying off the loans. If you are running virtually debt-free at that point, your ability to scale up from one to the next will be much better.